Microsoft Dynamics GP is an ERP software with accounting capabilities. It includes various packs for customizability and features tailored to specific industries’ needs. GP is offered as a perpetual license or subscription.
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Microsoft Dynamics SL
Score 5.4 out of 10
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Microsoft Dynamics SL is one of the ERP products in the Dynamics family.
This product was acquired from Solomon 2000.
The product is typically used by SMBs, particularly in project-based businesses (e.g. construction). It has strong accounting and project management capabilities.
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OCI
Score 8.1 out of 10
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Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is Oracles's infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform which combines the utility of public cloud with the granular control, security, and predictability of on-premises infrastructure.
We started with QuickBooks Enterprise when our company was young. We quickly outgrew this program as it was not able to accommodate the financial reporting we needed to satisfy our investors. QuickBooks was also very limited in managing our revenue as we grew. We did try Great …
Microsoft Dynamics GP is well-suited for our environment, as we pay a diverse group of employees, including on-the-road drivers, shop employees (some in other locations), and office employees. It easily tracks time off, taxes, pay, etc. The reporting allows us to verify with our drivers how they are paid each week, whether it be through mileage or stop-offs.
For a small to mid-size business, MS Dynamics SL is effective. We are capable of managing our finances with a very low risk of error. We have worked with MS Dynamics for almost 15 years and have more than doubled the size of our business in that time with very few issues from the program. We have exponentially increased our revenue and reporting demands and have found SL to be very dependable and stable. The program does have the occasional glitch and those are sometimes outside of the realm of expertise of our IT department. SL support is excellent, but their timeliness is not as urgent as ours.
As per our usage Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for almost 6 years hosting 500 + customers I can say its well suited application for any small scale to larger scale application as it can handle that capacity and provide more reliable cloud service only if you need any messaging service like pub/sub or sqs better to consider other services.
Great Plains started as back office/accounting, and that is still it's strong suit.
SQL and the GP programming language, Dexterity, provide a robust, scalable, and stable platform with well documented maintenance and repair procedures. Relatively easy to manage, tune, and support.
Microsoft support for GP verges on "particularly well". Doesn't quite get there but good enough once you know what you're doing
Strong partner network, including the GP User Group (GPUG)
Provides flexibility for complex project based cost accounting
Strong and flexible allocation processer for cost allocations, markups, and pricing
A "Flexible Billing" module under the project controller series that allows for multiple billing formats ranging from fixed price schedule of values, T&M or Cost Plus, and scheduled billing.
Flexible reporting with options using Crystal Reports, SSRS, a Quick Query tool, and ability to tie into MS Office tools such as MS Access and MS Excel
Tight integration with Financials, but also the ability to integrate with modules such as Sales Order, Inventory, and Field Service
Customization abilities ranging from a VBA (visual basic for application) foundation to allow customizing existing forms to the ability to use the SDK (Software Development Kit) to build more complex customizations that integrate with Dynamics SL.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has a generous free tier, moreso than other hyperscalers, with an always-free tier that guarantees certain products are always free
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure allows you to size VMs with differing combinations of CPU and RAM, which is contrary to other hyperscalers that have specific pre-defined combinations only
With respect to the allocations, once the expense is entered into the allocation account, you lose the ability to run any detail on just the total of the expense. It would be nice if you could run a trial balance on the allocation accounts the same way you can with regular accounts.
I've always thought security set up could be a bit simpler. It actually has gotten better through the years. Specifically, with eight separate entities, it would be nice to have a "master" setup where you could call up one group entity, assign the users rights, and then be finished. Currently, whenever I have a new user, I have to call up each individual entity and select all of the features I want the user to have. That means I have to do eight steps for each user.
Reporting in the Project module is lacking functionality. I understand that most companies have specific needs when it comes to tracking project information but the standard reports are not good.
I would recommend a product like Management Reporter that is for Projects only. Project Reporter should allow users to pull in all Project related data into reports.
Fixing suspended batches. Obviously all of us users have experienced this mess. SL knows what needs to be corrected and there could be some step by step fixes in a separate repair module to do the steps we do in Query Analyzer.
Navigating the UI takes lots of getting used to. It reminds me of older GCP (just to get used to where everything is).
Permission for different things always seemed to be more difficult than it really needed to be. Once you got them set up you were good but updating anything or creating new permissions for just about anything took longer than I thought it should.
Based on how the buttons were laid out, it was pretty easy to delete all of your DNS records, and backing them up was not as intuitive as I'd like with the UI, but it was easy to do using a script.
Due the economic challenges that Puerto Rico is having, the company has had to merge some companies in order to be more efficient. It has been easy in GP to process those merges, even thought we had to spend days to accomplish that the process was smooth and accurate. In addition we were able to streamline the purchasing and sales process and the organization is confident to keep renewing GP for the future versions.
Unfortunately, Dynamics' lack of ability to smoothly integrate with our CRM system is causing us to look at other solutions. The efficiencies that we gain by using Dynamics for our day to day accounting are lost in the constant headaches of getting sales quotes to import properly into the system for invoicing. Another major issue for us has been budgeting and reporting. We currently do all of our budgeting and board reporting in Excel, which is too time consuming and inefficient, especially when a system as robust as Dynamics should easily be able to handle this relatively simple task.
Reliability: Very dependable and stable OCI services have been for the business operations.Performance: The speed and efficiency of OCI in meeting their computing and storage needs.Scalability: The ease and effectiveness of scaling resources up or down to accommodate changing demands.Security: The robustness and effectiveness of OCI's security features in protecting their data and applications.
Though it is a basic accounting package, I believe some users do not find the old style menus and navigation options intuitive. There is also a great lack of training resources in the market, so users have to learn the product without guidance a lot, resulting in inefficient workflows and misuse or misunderstanding of many features.
I rate it a 10 because we have removed the fields we don't need so users can really crank the data into the system. The software was designed for the professional services firm in mind but does a tremendous job for construction firms and "blended" companies that are both distribution firms but project centric as well. Perhaps they drop ship inventory to a project where their employees or subs need to work on a project for example.
The services & products in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure needs more improvement to beat other Cloud service providers. The price is good & Security processes are good. We are requiring to put more effort in supporting this Oracle Cloud Infrastructure than other Cloud service providers. Probably better ways are there but is not super easy to find or not super available
We have had only one unplanned outage for 2 hours in the last 30 months. We shut down for 30 min to 1 hour once a month, but that is for Microsoft OS updates to the servers. Being a 24/7 world wide operation, the reliability is really important. We do get an 8 hour window on the weekend that we can be down for a short period to install Microsoft Dynamics SL updates, but we do not have many of those. On our last version upgrade, we shut the users out at 9:30 am and were fully operational in less than 6 hours. The upgrade was New SQL server, New SL server and 2 new Citrix servers.
Yeah sometimes we had to face unplanned outages due to underlying infrastructure issues, so not every time,e but once in a while we face issues with availability. But the good thing is we have redundancy with DR setup and multi region so we can manage.
From the start, I was surprised by response times and image quality accessing windows VMs with RDP. GCP, Azure and -many offerings in AWS- don't perform this speed. Also, that's evident in the quality of Infrastructure Management Team, because I just received one warning regarding a region failure, what confirms that's a mature platform.
Support is only used when needed, so unfortunately ,they get all the odd issues. It's a difficult business, but Microsoft and our firm do a great job of meeting customer needs. We get routine feedback that our support services are very good.
Overall it is amazing, there is always room for improvement. We have weekly updates that tend to slow the program used more and more. We had to change some reports within Oracle because the others wouldn’t load. This is tied to our payroll and the delays are causing many time constraint issues and panic. We have to create a new report when one breaks. Otherwise awesome!
Basically the challenge with this implementation was the Business Portal, too many errors and even the aplication is up and running the users are still having issues. We will start planning the migraton to GP 2015 soon.
Just to let it take its course. The implementation for me once I became a part of my former organization was pretty seamless. Just get to know the basics and call the support team to ask questions if you need help on an issue, should they arise. They are ready, willing, and able to help!
I come from a strong background of using SAP. SAP doesn't have the flexibility of GP, an example would be SAP doesn't allow core mods, if they catch you, you lose support. Microsoft doesn't really care about mods, but they will be quick to have the vendor you used support your issue if it is caused by those mods. With SAP your company adapts to the software, where with GP you adapt the software to you.
Of the comparable mid-range ERP systems, Dynamics SL competes at the lower end based on price, but also above the high-end based on flexibility, data, and reporting. Being able to stay with the same core accounting from a $100 million dollar company to a $3 billion dollar company shows the range of capabilities.
We used Microsoft Azure and Docker earlier and faced some difficulties like Microsoft Azure and Docker. Occasionally, the generation of large images can delay deployment. It is also necessary for me to admit that Microsoft Azure and Docker have a somewhat steep learning curve. Proper paperwork needs to be there. Docker has issues with performance on a number of platforms. On the other hand, OCI is easy to deploy and easy to understand.
was not part of initial purchase team. Anyways, i think unit pricing and billing frequency is good compared to other Cloud service providers, when it comes to Cloud Capital expenditure & Operational expenditure. Would be more interested in exploring more options where customers can get more cost relaxations on trying out new cloud services in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for example a new App or a feature
We have hosted around 500 + customers on this cloud so till day not faced any major issues, so we can use it for any kind of products and it can hold the load and easily scale based on need.
Services & Infra wise is ok to use & host applications & services. Security wise also good for a Cloud service provider. It is a interesting area to explore & using it for day to day needs can be further improvised in future probably. Modern day Services like AI and Machine learning could be improved
Microsoft Dynamics GP allows my clients to move from a paper or spreadsheet based company to an integrated, electronic, streamlined business. I love being able to help clients gain efficiencies through the use of Microsoft Dynamics GP.
Microsoft Dynamics GP allows for better customer service because everything is at our fingertips. If someone calls questioning an invoice, we can easily look it up. If someone calls stating they paid an invoice with a certain check number, we can quickly run a query to find that particular check number to see where it was applied.
Having everything on a single platform provides ease of use for upgrades, backups and end user training. There is only one software to learn!
